"Pete S" fired this volley in news:F6-
:

So we are in need of projects for
this part of the shops that will "wow" them and at the same time teach
a
little.
What do you folks do?


Pete, my main occupation is designing automated machinery, but I live in
cattle country, and do work for my own farm gear, and for the neighbors,
as well as the first thing.

"Wowing" a crowd with a machining process is a pretty high aspiration.
The average machining process is pretty boring (excuse the pun). It
doesn't glow red hot. It doesn't CLANG on the anvil. It doesn't throw
sparks, and doesn't need a stoked fire. And it doesn't change shape
rapidly.

About the most 'visual' machining process I can think of is turning
coarse threads on large stock with heavy feed. It throws smoking chips.
It gets visibly hot. It happens pretty quickly. It drastically alters
the look of the piece, and produces - from a 'plain' bar of metal -
something brand new that the audience would immediately recognize; a
screw!

About half of the things I do for local farmers involve cleaning up a
part, welding on a new 'stub' and turning threads on it. So it's a
legitimate farm repair.

Slow, big-hole, heavy-feed drilling with lots of gooey, dripping, brown
cutting oil would also be pretty visual, and those curls are impressive
(I guess).


LLoyd